It is a warm winter day. Doma City is a bit busier then usual, taking full advantage of the warm day. Clouds in the eastern sky threaten to bring rain or snow, thus everyone is determined to finish any outside chores.

Kilra, Corantir, Shina, D, Shada, and Red find themselves at Kotoki's chatting, drinking, or merely observing. Kotoki's is not unlike the other bars of doma, for today she's full to capacity.Though nothing seems out of place there seems to be a strange energy in the air the surrounds only the mentioned patrons.....

(Alright everyone give me a little introduction post. Then We can through you all into <spoiler>. Picture to come after I figure out what everyone (minus Kilra and Corantir) looks like.)

Kilraianjja, the resident drow in this little scene, was enjoying a drink at one of the more central tables to the inn. Having decided that she'd been spending too much time off adventuring of late, she'd decided to take D, her beloved "ssinssrigg," out for lunch. Fortunately for her, they hadn't been chased out the door upon entry by an irate, racist black mage, since he happened to be out at this time.

Which made enjoying herself all the easier.

"Not bad, is it?" she asked her boyfriend cheerfully, placing her half empty glass of wine down on the table.

"A little small compared to the other places around here, but it's cheerful." she finished, smiling pleasantly across the table.

IM: "Although I can't say much for the wine. It tastes like it was made last year!"

D smiled back and nodded, lying back on the chair, his thin, yet very slightly muscular arms behind him, hands on the back of his long brown hair reaching to the back of his neck, and now dyed white.

"Yeah, 't ain't bad." he said, and pulled one of the two long strands of hair cascading down his face from in front of brown eyes.

"It's been so long since we had time together like this. But, eh. Better late then never, I suppose." he rested even more on the chair, tilting it a bit, his foot on the table's leg. His cape was on his chair, and he was wearing what he always did: a pair of cargo pants and a t-shirt.

Kilra let out a weak and embarrassed chuckle. She knew, both in her mind and her heart, than males weren't just disposable love toys up here, and that she'd been neglecting him in favour of running off in search of heroic deeds. Recently, one such adventure had reminded her of the adorable rivvil that was sat in front of her, which is why she'd decided to spend some quality time with him.

"Sorry about that. Got caught up with adventure and all of that. Ooo! Did I tell you about the time with the malboros?!"

....of course, being who she was, it was nigh on impossible to get her mind off adventure, especially when the opportunity to talk about one of her past excursions arose.

Shina sat in a chair with a mug of dragonale, her face covered in the massive black robes she was known for. She periodically sipped the dragonale, but mainly kept to herself. The only part of her body showing was her long, black feline tail, which swished from side to side behind her.

"Quite loud today...I wonder what all the commotion's about...?"

Surveying the room, she removed her hood, revealing a human girl of around eighteen or nineteen with incredibly long black hair that reached her ankles, purple eyes, and a small brown kitten in her hand, which she petted constantly.

"Ixion, look at them...don't they look kinda weird...? And I've never seen a drow in a human town before...odd..."

"Wrong? No no, not at all!" she said, mentally scolding herself for making such an blatant lie, especially since she was perfectly good at convincing people she was speaking the truth when she wasn't. Of course, that required forethought and calculation, things which only came to her when she realised she needed them.

What did come to her naturally was a sharp pair of eyes, and an even sharper pair of ears. Thus, it wasn't surprising that she picked out the comment of the human girl who was carelessly observing her.

IM: "She must be new to Doma city. I knew that I was surprised when I found that drow weren't considered devils here on a large scale."

Honestly was a virtue. It was one of the things that the great tale's of heroes had taught her. Of course it didn't apply when tricking the evil villain, but D was hardly that.

"...a few days back I was sent several thousand years into the future, where Gaera was a perfect world called Peace. And I chose to come back, which may have altered the future and destroyed the perfect world and I'm feeling a little down over it."

Even though she'd "convinced" herself that she needed to come back, the entire series of events hadn't sat well in her mind.

RedFox walked along peacefully, but a little annoyed, following D's mental signature with ease. As he strolled, he repeated Warlock's words over and over inside his head. "I have a bad feeling about this. I think you should follow him. Not that I think he's incapable of taking care of himself, but another hand to help is always good."

He mumbled to himself, "He always says that... Now if D spots me, he'll be mad at me, and I know how annoying it is to be interrupted while spending time with a mate... Thanks to him, of course. I'd best remain out of sight." Though his clothes made this extremely hard. His blue robes were heavy, but that didn't stop them from flapping about at the slightest gust, and his sandals made as much noise as they could with every footfall. "Bloody..." He swore below his breath, as he checked if his wakizashi was present, before he anchored down his robes with a tight belt around his thin waist. Finally, he reached the inn. He stood by the entrance...

... And sat. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, Ignoring all that was around him. His senses were totally phased out from everything that was going on around him, especially D's conversation with Kilra, and he meditated in peace about everything he could think of.

... Without realising that his tail lay right in front of the door.

(for the sake of descriptions, I can simply provide a pic.
www.angelfire.com/anime4/...omance.txtRedFox looks exactly like the one on the right, except for the fact that in his eyes, where there is blue, in that pic, there should be white. The shirt underneath his robes is white, and his hands should be grey, not red. (NB: the drawing's real old, so it's quite sucky.))

Kilra's grin softened to a smile. Suddenly, she didn't care about the entire perfect future thing at all. She was very happy with herself, and she could tell that D felt loved. He always stuttered when he was like that. Indeed, all was good.

"So, did I tell you about that time with the malboros?" she asked again, seeming to have completely disregarded the fairly meaningful proceedings and gone back to looking for an excuse to tell him about her adventures.

Kilra grinned, exposing her teeth. D had a feeling he was in for a long story.

"Well, it all started when I was in a bar in this small town, and I heard that the place was having trouble with monsters, so obviously I had to help. I got teamed up with a man with wings called Tessei and a nekojin by a loud barman, who hurt my poor ears alot, and were informed the monsters were malboros. Tessei said they were like angry mops, but after seeing them I can tell you he was wrong. Anyway, we went to the swamp and began looking around, but we were ambushed! We had to fight off a dozen of them, each one almost twice as large as you are, with with vines for arms and with a really nasty stench! It was a tough fight at close quarters, totally outnumbered, classic stuff."

She paused for a moment to catch her breath, then launched into it again.

"Anyway, after all that this BIG Malboro came to attack us, and knocked us all out with it's breath! Then we woke up in this wierd elf's hut, and I thought I'd lost Dusk and Silence! After asking him lots of questions, because he was suspicious, we left, and were attacked by little malboros, which bit my leg! Then we had to fight the big one again, but the elf stopped us, except that he wasn't an elf, but a dragon. And one who didn't like humans at that. Anyway, he was controlling the malboros and planning to attack the village, but I convinced him that he was stupid for hating all humans because of the actions of some people called Dragoons in Riva, and then the nekojin turned into a weird creature and talked to it in a funny language. Then the elf-dragon told us to go away, and that he'd dispose of the malboros and leave or something like that."

There was a man sipping warm arctic tea at a table near the back. He wore a dark gray, hooded mantle, and had a full head of scraggly hair down to his shoulders. It was a red not auburn or amber, but rose. The light of the inn failed to reveal his eyes, but they did not seem to be targetting anyone. This was merely a wanderer calmly sipping his tea...and listening closely.

(OOC: Sorry for the lateness of this all. Honestly, I'm lucky to still have a working computer right now, as we started getting desperate trying to get rid of a virus. In response to Pervy's comment about Shada in the OOC forum, would it be too late to edit a few skills?)

Shada sat at a table not far from the door, slowly sipping from a fragrant cup of tea.

The young woman, were she standing, would have stood at 5'9", with haunting gray eyes, and long blonde hair, reaching down just past her shoulders. She wore a dark green tunic, belted at the waist, and extending down to her mid-thigh. Her left arm was englufed by a leather arm bracer, resembling a large glove for the entire arm. The right hand was covered by a simple, wrist length brown leather glove, which currently held her tea cup. A leather hauberk went over her tunic, covering her chest and stomach, and her shoulders were covered by a set of shoulder guards that appeared added onto the hauberk. Covering her legs were a pair of navy pantaloons, which tucked into her boots, which rose to mid-calf. Finally, at her side, connected to the belt was a rapier sheathe, the balde's presence made obvious by the handle at the end of it, which looked irregular somehow. An observant person might realize it was designed specifically for the left hand.

She looked over the other inn patrons curiously, lingering only a moment on D and Kilra, as their conversation was fairly easy to hear, and she wanted faces to attach to the voices. And her ears caught an odd word...

IM: "Ssinssrigg"? Sounds like some kind of small rodent.

She didn't think about it much longer, taking another sip of her tea, while still being careful to listen in.

Her eyes, meanwhile, moved to take in the form of a man in the back, whose shade of red hair was next to shocking. She almost wondered if it was natural.

Then she moved on to Shina. Hiding behind robes... Too bad it did more to attract attention than to divert it, and the tail affectively anulled the value of the get-up as a disguise... But then, who was she to judge, a mage in full leather armour?

With that she turned back to D and Kilra, watching them from the corner of her eye, while appearing to be interested in her beverage.

D was right in every way imaginable, though the ironic thing was that this time, the mindreader was the one that didn't hear a thing.

"Satuko..." He muttered to himself, as his thoughts fell onto the obvious. His tail twitched to life, wagging there on the floor, a blatant bright red patch in front of the door. He shifted slightly to sit more comfortably against the wall, his rear was getting numb now, and the pain was distracting him from what was realy important: His thoughts.

Kilra, feeling a fair bit wounded after D had referred to her precious medal as "that thing," turned her attention to the inquisitive girl.

Then she heard the voice, whispering in her ear. She looked left and right swiftly, figuring that she'd just mis-heard some bar banter.

When the voice spoke a second time, she was pretty certain that she wasn't hearing things. Then again, even she knew that hearing voices was not something you tell others about, and turned to answer Shina.

"Doma city's nice that way. I've seen a couple of others about too, one who works in another inn. Oh, and who are you?"

She found nothing odd about the girl's curiosity. Kilra knew all too well what it was like to be out of the know, and usually just bluntly inquired about anything she didn't understand or know about.

"... Yes, that's it. Also, you should stop lying to me." D said, rather confused about the noise thing, and rather annoyed that in a few minutes, Kilra had already lied to him twice. Was he that untrustworthy?

"I can't wait to get back to the shrine... At least then I can spend some decent time with Satu- Come..." "..." RedFox blinked hard and shook his head. "What the hell was that?" He eventually shrugged it off and resumed thinking. "Come..." "ok, this is weird... Don't tell me Warlock was right!" =>.<= He shook his head hard and waited for more things to happen, really aggrevatedly.

Shada's head turned sharply as she heard the voice. She hadn't heard anyone approaching, and intended to ask what the hell they thought they were doing, sneaking up on her... To find that the place that should have occupied by the offending whisperer was empty.

And she heard it again.

IM: Come where?

She looked at her tea suspiciously. Old tea bags? Maybe, but if so she should at least feel lightheaded or something... So then there was the other possibility. A telepath.

She set about studying the other patrons, to see if they were reacting to something, or if any of them happened to be looking her way.

"It seems to be amplified magically. Or just made by a very strong telepath. A man with power like this wouldn't joke." Corantir spoke loud enough so that all those around him could hear with the certainty a magic institute grad could deliver. His understanding of magical theories pointed only toward a prodigal source of the message. A moderately deep voice riddled with refinement yet harsh conciseness adorned his message to those in the proximity. Although he himself was unable to telepath, it was clear this was no joke. Of course, he was very curious of its origin, but he had no intention of finding out right this second. He continued sipping his tea calmly, waited, and listened patiently for more.

She mentally nodded to herself as someone spoke up. So, she's not the only target of this little farse. Nice to know she wasn't insane atleast.

And when Corantir spoke, she paid special attention. He made sense, despite that monsterous hairdo, which she did her best not to look at when he was speaking.

Reassured there was nothing wrong with it, she finished up her tea... Just in time to see Coran was drinking some as well, and wonder if she hadn't just goofed. Oh well, too late to do anything about it now. She set her cup aside.

"I don't know about that. If someone's going to all the trouble to contact us, don't you think they'll keep after us till we start moving? Granted they haven't given us any place to move to..."

Actually, she was kind of hinting at the mystery voice, as she, unlike Corantir, wouldn't mind finding out what this was all about sooner rather than later. Suppose we'll see what -- "Come..."

Well, speak of the devil...

IM: COME WHERE YOU BLEEDING IDIOT?! Either drop the crap and leave us alone, or tell us where to go!!